Maria Bartiromo discusses the democrat memo, and the attempt to defend the DOJ and FBI’s abuse of the FISA court, with Congressman John Ratcliffe. Representative Ratcliffe is one of the few House Intelligence Committee and House Judiciary Committee members who have actually seen the underlying FISA documents as ¹presented by the DOJ.

Mrs. Bartiromo clearly understands the prior DOJ/FBI scheme and engages with Ratcliffe to bring out the factual aspects behind the political corruption.

.

¹CTH reminder – A ‘better-than-reasonable’ possibility exists the DOJ FISA application documents presented to the highly restricted congressional reviewers might not be the same application documents provided to the FISA court. Only Trey Gowdy, John Ratcliffe, Adam Schiff and House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte have viewed the presented DOJ version of the FISA application. Chairman Goodlatte has requested the FISA court version be provided to his committee so he can compare.

FISA Court Presiding Judge Collyer has indicated she is aware of Goodlatte’s concern, and understanding of the reason therein. Judge Collyer provided Chairman Goodlatte with an option of her review if Goodlatte could convince the executive branch (DOJ) to declassify their version and copy her on their response to him. This multi-branch investigative angle is ground-breaking, ongoing and nuclear in consequence if suspicion becomes fact.

There are nuances in each response specific to the statutory roles of each Chairman and the specific requests made by each committee. Reflected in Judge Collyer’s responses is a need for careful consideration of each unique request.

♦House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes holds primary oversight authority over the aggregate Intelligence Community (IC). Chairman Nunes has requested the transcripts from the FISA Court during the DOJ/FBI Title-1 surveillance application over their target, U.S. person Carter Page.

♦House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte holds primary oversight authority over the Department of Justice -including the FISA court- and has requested the actual FISA Title-1 application as submitted by the DOJ/FBI for surveillance of Carter Page.

Judge Collyer responds to both legislative branch chairmen from the position of “never previously receiving such requests.” There are separation of power challenges, but also an understanding inherent in the response to Chairman Goodlatte of the unique statutory oversight his committee holds.

The Legislative Branch created the FISA Court system; however, the secret court resides in the Judicial Branch. Judge Collyer is taking both requests under consideration and asks both Chairmen to consider seeking relief from the Executive Branch with requests directly to the DOJ for the majority of the information they seek.

However, there is an underlying issue not being discussed within the communication – yet visible in the corner amid their engagement. That issue is the possibility the DOJ may have modified the FISA documents within its possession in an effort to hide from congress the trail of a conspiracy against a presidential candidate and an incoming administration.

In essence, the FISA documents held by the court *may not be* identical to the FISA documents released by the Department of Justice. Chairman Goodlatte is seeking to rule out that possibility.

We can never forget the Greatest White Hat of them all! Our President honored him in front of all the military brass!

Admiral Rogers, words are not enough to thank you 🙏! I hope to have the chance one day either on this Earth or in Heaven to shake your hand and thank you from the bottom of my heart! You saved our country and allowed @realDonaldTrump the chance to Make America Great Again! pic.twitter.com/eGjeSqWyrx

Flep, I certainly appreciate your posts and conviction that these traitors will be brought to justice and ultimately will pay the price BUT…I might have to join Howie and start doubting. The great Admiral exposed this cabal with his audit in April 2016. Yet two years later, 2 months from now, how much closer to justice will we truly be? Yes, I know we need to trust VSGPDJT and AG Sessions but I reviewed the entire timeline yesterday and “slow and patience required” do not adequately describe what we all need to do andf be. WHEN???

Maybe it will help if you are reminded that the devil wants you to believe your doubts, and doubt your beliefs. There is good reason to think that the Lord is willing to help you to disappoint the devil.

Mark 9:24 King James Version (KJV)
24 And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

Keep praying for our VSGPDJT and all those who wish to help MAGA. I also regularly pray for those who are the enemies of MAGA to be even more ridiculous and ever more ridiculous. So fare I have not been disappointed.

I understand some’s leery view of Q because it’s presented as clues and not nicely laid out like we have here in the Treehouse. (Thanks, Sundance!) Having said that, what I find quite amazing is the individual, and I might add dedicated, research being undertaken by the Qannon and loyal followers. Want to know the passenger list on the plane that went down…or their occupations and connections? Within a few hours these Q followers have it posted. It was the Q threads that brought up the very sophisticated audio alarm system in the Broward school.
My point, they are a different type of Deplorables, still making valuable contributions, and hopefully together we will MAGA!

I am here. Seems like a part time job just keeping up, much less adding anything.

Ezra Cohen-Watnick

I still wonder about this guy. Seems like he was integral to getting the PDBs in front of Nunes in the first place. Hosted the SCIF. Buddy of Jared’s. Disagreed and distrusted the CIA. Flynn protege. Then got canned by McMaster, eventually.

(Wikipedia paraphrase) The Ides of March is a day on the Roman calendar that corresponds to March 15. It was marked by several religious observances and was notable for the Romans as a deadline for settling debts.

The Ides of March was also the occasion of the Feast of Anna Perenna, a goddess of the year whose festival originally concluded the ceremonies of the new year. The day was enthusiastically celebrated among the common people with picnics, drinking, and revelry. One source from late antiquity also places the Mamuralia on the Ides of March. This observance, which has aspects of scapegoat or ancient Greek pharmakos ritual, involved beating an old man dressed in animal skins and perhaps driving him from the city (Schiff?). The ritual may have been a new year festival representing the expulsion of the old year.

It appears, to some, that Attorney General Sessions may be slow to the draw. A learned experienced southerner may only appear slow. We should not be fooled if our President is continuing to support him and his team. Yes, I agree, it is frustrating listening to Attorney General Sessions take 5 minutes to say what Maria says 17 seconds. She’s not a southerner.

mickey, and when the hammer falls it must hit directly the target and that means getting the case together completely with no escape holes. There are reasons galore why Sessions recused himself and many of believe and I think it is true that Sessions and Trump were starting work on the whole democrat fiasco. When your case is complete is when you go to trial and get the death sentence. The Ides of March is also known for nastiness with the murder of Julius Caesar and so we perhaps will see the hammer hit!

I don’t think it’s pessimism, it’s more a case of seeing the layers and depths to which this conspiracy goes and after 8 years of Obama, how little true justice we saw. I want this done right of course but also have what I consider to be a justifiable sense of caution that the right people will be held accountable.

…is someone way, way, Way underestimating the obfuscation capabilities of the DC swamp?
[ whenever that occurs, which is 99% of the time, the problem becomes …swept under the proverbial rug, over time. What really happened to TWA flight 800, 20 years ago …and before 9-11-01 ? etc. ]

Yes is the correct answer indeed. That is such a bogus argument about how you can’t do anything till you can roll them all up.
Mueller is getting convictions, and is adding charges to his indictments as he goes along. While he is not on our side, that is how its done. You charge some people to get them talking.

Having been intimately involved in the distant past with undercover agents dealing with covert investigations I can assure you most cases, involving a group rather than a single criminal, took two years or longer before the undercover agent could reveal himself as a LEO; meaning that he was ready to testify in public in front of a Judge.
Maybe my past experience makes me a little more patient at the apparent lack of progress.

From the persecutor side of such things, same same. Glad to see some confirmation from your experience, too. It’s easy to get disappointed and antsy when you look at things in the context of the 20 min MSM attention span–24/7 cycle and hyper-drive of digital media, but the real, analog world still moves at the same, slow 40 hr. week rate it has for a long long time. Still say Sessions or Rosenstein should just revert CHomey’s exoneration memo to its original, pre-Strozk edits text and put it on an indictment form. Easy peasy. Finding of gross negligence in handling classified info=GAC.

Cuppa – you are so correct. I was inpatient at first about all this, but….more names keep getting into the mix (thanks to the brilliance of Sundance outlining it so well). It will all pop soon and now the little fish and the big fish will fry when it’s all said and done IMHO. I do think it’s right around the corner.

I can wait.. impatiently, as long as enough is proven or known publicly to allow most of the American people to see the hoax that was tried to be put on this President by the last administration, and a few at the top of the DOJ/FBI. Can that be done without trials and indictments? I believe so. People knew what Hillary was about even with all the facts been hidden from us.

We must not let the MSM set the narrative. We must see that we get out the vote to maintain the house and Senate. To me, that is imperative. If the IG report is soon to come out, then the process will heat up, but the left will dig in and its gonna get nasty like nothing we have seen before in this country.

Legal stuff takes time. My S.O. is a law partner, my grandfather was a federal judge. I’ve seen plenty. When the indictments (and/or plea bargains) are made public, they’re gonna be rock solid, and no avalanche of political BS is gonna be able to change any of that.

…well, the complicit lib media-ski’s could under-report facts,
do the blame shifty thingy…
..and / or make something else to become the news of the day (distract)…
etc. etc. (there are a lot of Allinski tools)

Reading what other people are saying here, my take is that since the Dems are dirtier than the Republicans, they would like to see an equal (at least!) amount of indictments of Democrats as Mueller is indicting Republicans, as this process goes along. In other words, can’t we have at least one indictment, unless someone has a plausible explanation why Mueller should have all of the attention? I agree with good strategies when good strategies are forthcoming, but Mueller is leading the PR race by a wide margin, and I don’t think that’s healthy.

” . . . but Mueller is leading the PR race by a wide margin, and I don’t think that’s healthy.”

An important point which too few on our side seem to understand.
Counseling “patience,” while a virtue, is entirely besides the point.
The lo-fo’s in the stands look at the scoreboard. What’s up there isn’t fake news and it’s not pretty.

Until there is evidence of some rule of law being applied to these people surrounded by facts and timelines that point to their guilt that is firewalled behind “secrecy”, I don’t see nor do I believe any rule of law applies to these people.

I don’t see that Mueller is winning anything. The 13 Russian indictments are phony and the public know it. Flynn indictment will be thrown out. Manfort indicted for money laudering with the Podesta Group 3-7 years ago?

Mueller is leading but where will he wind up? It appears that he is heading in the wrong direction. He has problems of his own, i.e., the uranium sale proving he is not trustworthy. The end of this fantastic movie will be thrilling and I look forward to seeing it going in the direction of Trump and Sessions are going vs. that of Mueller.

There are felonies to be prosecuted. If there aren’t actual convictions of Democrats and their allies before midterms, that’s big trouble. It’s OK to keep strategies secret, if in fact there are strategies. We’re the customers here, and we’re paying for this stuff. We have a right to know – not the actual details necessarily, but we have a right to know that it will be done.

I don’t think it’s prudent to telegraph your attack and while getting “one indictment” may help you feel our side is doing something, it also allows the other side to see where we’re heading–giving them time to prepare or cover up something. Surprise is better—we want a knock out!

We the people have a right to know that that will actually be done. Not the details necessarily, but the end result. We’re the customers here – we own the government. I don’t believe that we’re obligated to have faith that the law will be followed – we have to *know* for a fact that the law will be followed.

Meuller should just be called to account for whether he’s remained focused on his assignment–Russian interference in the election/collusion with Trump campaign. If the Rooskie “troll farms” is all he’s got by now, it’s time to shut the wasteful charade down. Regular district AAGs can handle the financial crimes of Gates and Manafort, as well as any other OT BS the 40 Mule Team has pooted out. No need and no authorization for OT BS by a special counsel.

In essence, the FISA documents held by the court *may not be* identical to the FISA documents released by the Department of Justice. Chairman Goodlatte is seeking to rule out that possibility.

Run a CRC or Checksum test on each text document file. If the numbers, returned by the utility on each document are identical then the underlining text is identical. No-one need see the actual documents.

Their is no room for error using this test. Therefore, no violation of security. You show me, your number, and I will show you my number.

Requires no trust, and this makes it perfect, for our purpose. Each party runs the utility separately on their own file copy. Later the judge opens the sealed envelopes and compare a string of numbers or digits. No room for error.

Sorry Bill, but in this environment, these guys print a document, file it, mark it up, then scan it in again. And the battle so far is just getting the court to cough up the document… the comparison will be the easy part. Nothing is as simple as a checksum, even if you OCR’d it. Gotta use the Mark 1 Eyeball.

A forensic analysis would be interesting. Digital file servers have logging capability but it needs to be turned on by the administrator. I would think that the FBI, DOJ, CIA, and NSA would have logging turned on. The files need to be shared between the players either via a file server or email (also tracked) so a trail of the files movement could be reconstructed.

Yes, we are really talking about the content of the two files. CRC is one utility and Checksum another. They both do the same kind of thing. Guarantee the file content of each or a string of data. I have even tried to trip up the utilities by adding one space or by changing a number, etc.

Bill is assuming that the FISA court keeps a digital copy of the applications they receive. If they do, then perhaps his idea has merit. If not, then …. sorry.

While there is practically no chance of two slightly different files producing the same MD5SUM or some other capable hash, the real risk is that due to some accident in handling of the files that are being compared, that a difference will be accidentally induced causing what might otherwise be matching files, to show up as different. The test that Bill is suggesting is an all or nothing type of test.

So if the MD5SUMs match, there is no reason to go further (assuming court keeps a digital copy), but if MD5SUMs do not match, we cannot instantly say it is proof of foul play. There are numerous possibly innocent mistakes which could account for differences.

We know the documents won’t match. Given the fraud, delay tactics and down right corruption, I would bet money that they are different. And Goodlatte has seen enough to know. Sessions should be fired over this farce alone. There is ABSOLUTELY NO reason for him not to insist on timely release of documents and verification of all documents. He knows this is a hornets nest and he had better get out his raid, or get out and let someone who really cares about this country take over. And we know it won’t be Frank Burns, aka Rod Rosenstein. He is up to his big ears in all this corruption.

This is why my greatest fear is that there is no change log as well as no declassification and destruction log to account for originals vs changes allowed under the FISA laws. That goes for FBI transcripts and investigatory notes as well. Plus, Obama had until 19 January 2017 to declassify and allow destruction and/or removal of records and data.

It has already been shown that they wouldn’t even log who was performing the FISA “about” queries, so something tells me their records management here is equally negligent. Court records are traditionally held to a higher retention standard however. I will leave it to the reader whether you choose to believe it is pure incompetence or willful criminality.

I was paying close attention to Admiral Rogers testimony on CSPAN during that public hearing. His answers were carefully crafted to not be “spilling the beans” on their capabilities.
Remember that DOJ National Security Division, headed by John P Carlin, knew that Admiral Rogers was on to them when he instructed the NSA Compliance Officer to conduct a full audit. Mr. Carlin rushed to the FISA Court to “confess” some irregularities (the court did not believe him) before the audit was completed. He then resigned 3 weeks before an election that most people thought HRC would win.
Also, about a year ago there was that 25 year old woman (with the unique name that escapes me now) that was prompted busted printing and smuggling out classified documents to leak. The authorities knew exactly who printed them, where and when.

Finding out whether the FISA application had been modified before giving it to the congressional oversight members shouldn’t take so long. If Judge Collyer won’t release the FISA applications to Dunes, can he file an expedited appeal to SCOTUS? At a minimum, the president should declassify the versions that have been given to the House members, so they can give them to Collyer to compare and contrast. I’m no lawyer though, so I’m afflicted with common sense.

The reason I mentioned it is because it’s child’s play to subvert. Ask any crypto person. The only way it’s reliable is if the testers are 100 percent trustworthy. In today’s world, news people and politicians will deny things that are visible right next to them on the screen.

This system takes perverse pride in avoiding common sense. Maybe it’s the legal guild burnishing its arcane value by constipating the obvious and alienating the butchers and bakers. The subliminal message? Justice is too complex for the likes of you.

Meanwhile the whole nation awaits memos, counter-memos and half-nelsons. All this lawyerly self-pleasuring is a component of what the Bible cites will befall us in the ascent of lawlessness. Yeah they got hammers (sorry gavels) and august robes and the billable hours rack up on both sides. What this grotesque system is masterful at is avoiding the clang of prison bars. I’m not convinced we’ll hear them this time either.

I’m haunted by the shit-eating grins of the Clintons in Hawaii a few weeks ago. They looked like the didn’t have a care in the world. I don’t know how psychopaths look when the end is near and a US Marshall could be hiding around every corner. I only know how i would look, how I would feel.

To all purple ties controversy…. When you won over your enemy….you are taken theirs possession/symbols/flags etc. in this case purple color/ties and wear them…some of you noticed our VSGPDJT shortly after 01/21/17 wear them for day or so…. Yes HE do not have to go on TV with bullhorn tell it …you probably noticed way how he drank cup of h2o in speech with purple tie…

Did Chairman Nunes formally ask the DOJ for the copies of the applications it presented to the courts? And, what is the status of the request? I’d sure like to see our side get a chance at the plate before Mueller strikes/scores again.

Mueller is investigating Russian Collusion with Trump. Mueller is indicticting and convicting people.

We know those two sentences are unrelated, but the MSM is linking them, and the 90 percent of America that gets their news in 5 minute bites “at the top of the hour” on their commute home, are forming opinions.

+1
Mueller is a big foul offensive smell over the entire country that won’t go away.
Nobody on our side (esp. DOJ) is running interference on him or making him go away.
He is winning the minds and hearts of lo-fo nation – which is the majority.

You two are correct. We Conservatives have constantly proven we can win the argument, win the moral high ground and lose the war. It’s time to win the war, prosecute these people. I don’t think 30+yrs is me being impatient. The evidence has been there. We have no one willing to prosecute. There’s a solid chance we still don’t, although I’d like to believe sundance’s theory of sessions feeding the IG or controlling the process via him. If 30yrs and 100s of Crimes are any indicator of whether it gets swept under the rug….it doesn’t look so hot.

If Horowitz and “the Report” (anyone remember “the Memo”?) turns out to be a bust, the goalpost will simply be moved downfield, again.
Mueller will continue unimpeded inflicting PR damage.
But look over there! 50 million sealed indictments!

Not just CNN. It’s all of the legacy media outlets echoing, repeating the same narrative as they always do. Between ABC CBS NBC CNN MSNBC PBS and to a lesser extent FNC, combined with online NYT, WaPo, Huff&Puff, Politico, The Hill, and on and on. They’re all repeating the Mueller indictments, chewing them over, making predictions about how that will affect the President, etc. That narrative is 24/7. And collectively they have many many millions of daily viewers.

Like it or not, the legacy media are very persuasive in the aggregate. We’ve learned to ignore the fake news. I venture to say most folks who *only* get their news from legacy media still have no clue what’s really real vs. what’s really fake. So I’m just trying to keep the total information environment in perspective.

..It’s all of the legacy media outlets echoing, repeating the same narrative as they always do…
[Repeating narratives that are outright lies now]
When I am over at YouTube pasting URLs of theis website in their comment sections, the number of “views” on the counters is scary, even if they are embellished.
Some of the comments made below leftist op-eds are even scarier – there are way too many people believing utter rubbish about our President

Good point. So far, Murllet is the ONLY one producing public indictments. If you want to counter that narrative, then start producing indictments against the spy ring. Otherwise, Republicans aren’t showing up to the polls this fall.

I believe Nunes request was for the transcripts. Goodlatte requested the actual applications. Judge Collyers denied both requests. She said there are no formal transcripts and she’s not sure that she has the authority to release to Exec Branch the applications but dropped at the end that she’d be willing to compare what Goodlatte has to what she has.

Probably not. The court is going to follow the law and I doubt legislation is written to include sanctions by the Judiciary. The Judiciary could reject submissions from individuals suspected of lying to the court I suppose.

Would submitting one set of documents to the FISA court and a altered set (claimed to be submitted to The FISA) to congress constitute lying to congress, or something of legal significance (jail time)?

This is now a page turner novel of incredible proportion, and it’s getting a lot longer than War and Peace. Almost impossible for the regular Joe to comprehend how deep and convoluted this thing is. It’s like trying to unravel a 1000 yard birdsnest of sawing thread!

That’s why Sundance has provided a clean set of videos that summarize the saga, and also a good aggregation of his successive chapters describing background and chronology of the events. It’s not difficult to understand if one takes maybe an hour or two to read these in order.

Occams Razor says they are the same and Judge Contreras was just a very easy rubber stamp. I mean, that would really be low down to alter legal documents. Still, Goodlatte is a lawyer, and good lawyers, at least at trial, don’t ask a question that they don’t already know the answer to. That is what has me intrigued. What does he know? Or is he fishing.

Based on the almost negligible number of rejected applications, I suspect that the entire court had actually turned into a rubber stamp. They may have gotten a bit lazy in questioning DOJ about applications, and took them at their word when they said ‘the info is solid’.

With thousands of warrants approved and one on Trump rejected, I think the judge told them to come back with more. So they did. Either they buffaloed the judge or the judge was in on it. Either way it doesn’t matter. Somebody is going to march in the frog parade.

Why they don’t cut their losses and cop to the crime is beyond me. This ’18 election is going be about who controls the Census and redistricting. I can imagine this going off in October. Late October.

Because the fraudulent application for the Page warrant and subsequent renewals is merely the tip of a huge iceberg. It’s quite possible and has been suggested (even claimed by some) that the government has been lying to FISC on warrant apps regularly since that court’s inception. The potential ramifications of the Page warrant being proven fraudulent are seriously huge.

see latest release of strzok page texts on that topic…if i remember correctly, strzok mentions in passing that a FISA warrant had been issued at some time previously based on material misrepresentations.

Yep. As I read it, the process rules are onerous to avoid the judges having to seriously worry about abuse. That means the foxes are guarding the henhouse, and periodically announcing to the guard dogs that all is well. We have become complacent and assume that “it can’t happen here.” It just did, and probably not for the first time, by a long shot.

Once we get through the review of applications and warrants phase, we will at some point have to have someone look at the actual evidence/information that was gathered using them.

What if we find that 10% of the information is actually about Page and 90% is about Trump associates?

Also someone (and I am assuming it will be DNI Coats staff) will need to review the Presidential Daily Briefings from that time period when Obama was still in office to see if this information made its way into those.

I have assumed Coats has already done this and this is what he showed Nunes in March 2017 that kicked this whole thing off.

I am pretty sure I read (somewhere) on the new comprehensive post last night that much of that was in the PDB. The confidential PDB went to lots of people in the executive branch, but no one in Congress, to get it out there to use against DJT.
That is how Evelyn Farkas knew what she knew when gushed forth with all those tidbits live on MSLSD.

…the FBI and DOJ have been demoting some folks, for awhile…
as some await the next ‘report’.
[ and yes, in the very highly lawyer-ed up, and the often obfuscating ‘investigations’, or gotch ya games. for years in the DC swamp,
some can see why the ducks need to be gathered and get into great order. So as to be prepared to share the whole truths,
beyond a reasonable doubt (criminal courts) and / or
be able to provide a preponderance of evidence (civil court).]

This analogy may not quite fit…
at some point in time,
someone(s) might wonder ….
(and some likely are thinking ahead, but not enough are, on the good person’s side…and likely plenty are, on the bad $ide…)…
…how much the shuffling of seating arrangements and chairs on the Titantic actually helps (or hurts) to alert a relatively, complacent, or top heavy ship, in the advance of potential and real dangers that really do exist?

Why did President Trump meet with Comey before the inauguration and then with Mueller before firing Comey? Did the President request the meetings or was it his Chief of Staff Preibus? Maybe it was Comey and Mueller? The dates coincide with the EXPOSED COUP.

I believe Mueller was one of three under consideration to be the new FBI chief. So Mueller would automatically have been interviewed by POTUS. As I recall, Comey was fired, Wray was appointed, and within a few days Rosenstein appointed Mueller special counsel. I think Trump may have dodged a bullet by not selecting Mueller to be his FBI chief. The guy obviously has it in for Trump, and Mueller would have been able to use all the powers of the FBI to get him.

Comey can be prosecuted today, he has confessed, that prosecution in no way obviates the possibility of other charges against him or the investigations of others.
Remember the perps know everything that the FBI / DoJ / Horowitz know, the people that don’t know are the US citizen voters.

Rubbish.
Everyone who is involved at felony level knows the facts.
How does not charging Comey make it any harder to charge Comey in the future?
It doesn’t.
Even Trump supporters on the inside don’t want to trash the FBI.
There’s our massive problem ‘ol buddy.

For those of you who want justice thru our court system, temper your expectations. I was the witness and the object of a crime. We had dna evidence and lot more. The perpetrator would have been a three time felon and faced twenty five years in jail. It took five years for the case to wind it’s way thru the courts. From my perspective it didn’t end well. This case was the only case the prosecutor had that wasn’t a homicide. She needed to clear her case load and she did.

Agree. We can’t allow the bad guys to keep “winning” with prosecutions while we appear to be D***less Tracy’s. Especially with midterms coming up. Of course, a big and sudden blow to the Demoncrats just before the 2018 elections would be awesome, but it seems risky to me to plan it that close.

Can’t agree with you more. Until we get prosecutions, it’s a he said-she said to the public. There’s something about grand juries and indictments that causes the public to sit up and take notice. Also, while the opposition media can spin everyday stories, it gets a lot harder for them to play the spin game once the indictments start coming down.

If this ends up being a he said-she said and the public ends up not getting it, it will be like it never happened.

Also, time is of the essence in investigations. You want to get on key conspirators right away before memories fade and narratives have a chance to get constructed. In investigations, you don’t wait til you “have all your ducks lined up” to do something. On the contrary, you start out with the basic information and build your case block by block, using interviews, documents, and importantly grand jury testimony, just like Mueller is doing. As soon as you have enough information to indict someone, you apply the screws to see if you can get him to flip. And you do this successively as you build your case. Mueller is conducting a classic investigation. People need to watch him to see what should be happening in the FISA case.

I don’t know what Sessions is up to, but he is not appointing a special counsel, which this case cries out for. Yesterday, again, Trump made a plea for an investigation. Here is the exchange between him and Jeanine Pirro. President Trump: ” A lot of bad things happened on the other side, not on this side but on the other side, and someone should look into it because what they did is really fraudulent, and somebody should be looking into that. And, by somebody, I’m talking about you know who.” Judge Pirro: “I have a feeling I know who it is Mr. President.”

How much clearer can he make it? Sessions has everything he needs to start a full-blown investigation, with a special counsel, a grand jury, and the works. But he just thumbs his nose at the President. Why?

Session’s is the final protector of the UniParty state.
He refuses to direct the FBI to immediately comply with Congressional directives, the Session’s groupies might finally get what’s going on when Sessions refuses to order the FBI / DoJ to prosecute their own political elites when the Horowitz report is tabled.
(Maybe a mid level operator gets done with a process violation to keep President Trump happy).

What about the 3 renewals? Greatly increases the cast of characters who would have been involved.

I suspect Contreras would have approved the proverbial ham sandwich. The FISA judges were part of the conspiracy. What was presented was almost irrelevant. The judges, like everyone else, knew that the real target was Trump.

If Horowitz had found evidence of crimes, he would have turned it over to Sessions/Rosenstein. If Sessions/Rosenstein have received such information, they could have set up a task force to investigate such as the one discussed at the Sessions/Coates news conference in August. This task force could have set up a grand jury and be feeding it information from Horowitz, Strzok, L. Page, Priestap, Baker and Ohr. There is no required time table for announcing the activities of a grand jury or a task force. If it were me running the grand jury, I would hold off on any announcement until after Horowitz’ report goes public.

That isn’t the date Carter Page spoke in Moscow, but it is the date the FBI/Fusion GPS set up the meeting for Natalia Veselnitskaya. 3 prominent people attended that meeting. Donald Trump Jr, Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner. The meeting was clearly a set-up to gain the FISA

“Judge Collyer has indicated she is aware of Goodlatte’s concern, and understanding of the reason therein. Judge Collyer provided Chairman Goodlatte with an option of her review if Goodlatte could convince the executive branch (DOJ) to declassify their version and copy her on their response to him.”

I don’t see where an “option to review” is offered by the Judge? It’s not explicit in the letter to Goodlatte…or am I misreading? Seems I mportant because I thought the only path fwd was to wait until they untangled separation of powers issues. What am I missing? Thanks!

One thing that Ratcliffe said that raised a flag for me was that he “expects” the IG report to be out in a month. They have been saying that for several months now. It keeps getting pushed back a month. I thought the deadline was March?

Here is my what if…What if the FISA was for 3 people. Donald Trump Jr, Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner. The three most prominent people in the meeting set up by FBI/Fusion GPS with Natalia Veselnitskaya ?

What happens if the DOJ modified the FISA documents to Congress and they aren’t the same as that presented to FISA judge? Is the act of presenting falsified documents to Congress a prosecutable crime? People have lied to Congress numerous times and nothing happened.

I just had a conversation with the president (imaginary conversation). He called me in and said “Nobody knows that we’re having this conversation. We have a big surprise coming days before the election that will shock the voters and turn them against the Democrats.”

I replied and said “Mr. President, given that you don’t have absolute power, I’m sure that you’ll have to depend on the Attorney General and a few other folks to deliver the bad news to your opponents then, and I wonder if there’s any unforseen possibility that they would change their minds and not go through with your plan at the last moment?”

It’s funny you should mention an imaginary conversation….I actually had a dream last night that the SWAT team came in and took Hitlery, Podesta, Ovomit and the rest of these vile people in cuffs. It was a very good dream. Do you think I am on the CTH a little too much or is it foreshadowing?

Various whistleblowers on just HOW EXTENSIVE the spying was on Trump, family and campaign team.

“The data collection and human intelligence (following Trump family and associates around) was not initially collected as part of a domestic-to-foreign warrant looking into the supposed collusion of Trump with the Russians. The surveillance of the entire Trump staff was a domestic, criminal plot to ensure Trump never became president. Source: “Everybody in U.S. Intelligence knew that this was highly illegal. It was framed to us that Trump was trying to hurt America; that he was treasonous. We all innately knew who was being treasonous. And there was never a foreign component to this. It was always domestic.” “

Charles Colson, a jailed Watergate conspirator, was persuaded by his failed efforts to maintain a lie that the Easter story must be true-
“Take it from one who was involved in conspiracy, who saw the frailty of man firsthand,” he declared, “there is no way the 11 apostles, who were with Jesus at the time of the resurrection, could ever have gone around for 40 years proclaiming Jesus’ resurrection unless it were true.” Washington Post, 9/23/83

May be an important reminder for our current crop of conspirators in this season of Lent.

This Judge Collyer seems a bit obtuse. She knows that Goodlatte needs the original document from the court to compare with the one he received from the DOJ. For her to tell Goodlatte he should try to get the document from the DOJ is basically telling him to buzz off. She cites separation of powers, but there is nothing in separation of powers that precludes her from cooperating with Congress, her overseer. She’s merely being obstructionist and is forcing Goodlatte, I assume, to go to SCOTUS to get an order for her to comply. Does Goodlatte have to serve her with a subpoena first?

reading between the lines, it seems she wants opposing briefs so she can pick and choose between them…of course, as you aptly put it, how is that judiciary committee and or intel committee arent overseeing her?!

unless dersh is right, and FISA is a sui generis legal regime…perhaps noone can oversee it, there are no rules, it is Thunderdome.
yes that would make sense.

After reading the description contained in the warrant application regarding the sourcing of the probable cause, I’m thinking Judge Collyer here is covering up for her judges. The sourcing description contains some of the most tortured English one will ever read, all for the purpose of hiding the fact that the information comprising probable cause came from Hillary-funded opposition research. No responsible judge could have read that description without asking, ” WTH does this mean? Explain that in plain English.” And if he had asked that question, he would have known the truth and most likely would have denied the warrant.

So it looks like the judge either (1) asked the question and, acting as a co-conspirator, granted the warrant, or (2) didn’t ask the question and rubber stamped the warrant. In either case, Judge Collyer has a huge embarrassment to cover up. She can cite separation of powers to sustain the coverup. But my question is, if Nunes can subpoena members of the executive branch (McCabe, Rybicki, etc) without a separation of powers issue, why can’t he subpoena members of the judicial branch (the judges granting the warrants) to have them explain why they granted the warrants?

Seems to me Judge Collyer is saying, since the requests are unprecedented, she’s not sure the Court has the authority to release classified information. It’s not the Court that deemed ITSELF secret. It’s not the Court that classified it’s proceedings. It was declared so by Congress and it is the Executive Branch that controls the classification and DE-classification of the information. We attack Judges who ignore the separation of powers and we attack Judges who are very cognizant of and try to respect the separation of powers. One is wrong the other is right.